Twenty-three Democratic members of Congress despatched a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday calling on them to assist a authorized bid to overturn a sequence of 100-year-old racist court docket precedents that also assist to disclaim 3.6 million Americans equal rights and protections.
The letter, led by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva and U.S. Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett, urges Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland to “call on the Supreme Court to grant review” of Fitisemanu v. U.S., a case introduced by three American Samoans and an American Samoan nonprofit difficult court docket precedents often called the Insular Cases.
“[T]he Insular Cases represent a shameful legacy that simply cannot be squared with the core values of racial justice and equity that we share with your administration,” the lawmakers write.
These precedents, determined between 1898 and 1922, created the class of “unincorporated territory” to allow U.S. colonial growth from Puerto Rico to the Philippines whereas denying the rights and privileges of citizenship to their residents solely due to their race. The court docket choices referred to as the residents of those territories “savage tribes” and “alien” and “uncivilized race[s]” who have been “absolutely unfit to receive” the rights granted to American residents.
The residents of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa all nonetheless lack equal rights and privileges to U.S. residents underneath these court docket precedents. And the deprivation of rights for American Samoans is much more acute, as they’re categorized as “American nationals,” and subsequently can’t will not be even be eligible for citizenship rights in the event that they transfer to the U.S. mainland as different territorial residents can.
John Fitisemanu and the opposite plaintiffs, Pale Tuli and Rosavita Tuli, who’re all at present residents of Utah, argue that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which grants birthright citizenship to individuals “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” covers anybody born within the U.S.-controlled territories.
The lawyer for Fitisemanu and the Tulis additionally sent a letter to Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar on Tuesday calling on her to “join petitioners in asking the Supreme Court to finally and formally overturn the Insular Cases.”
Despite Biden’s pledge to root out systemic racism and white supremacy, the lawyer’s letter notes that the Biden Justice Department has “relied on and vigorously defended the Insular Cases to sustain the conclusion that petitioners are not entitled to birthright citizenship under the Citizenship Clause.”
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The Justice Department declined to remark. The White House didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Civil rights teams backing the Fitisemanu case beforehand referred to as on Garland and Prelogar to cease counting on the Insular Cases of their court docket arguments.
Both letters from Fitisemanu’s lawyer and the Democratic lawmakers name on Biden, Garland and Prelogar to publicly surrender and apologize for the reliance of the Insular Cases because the Obama administration did almost about the 1944 resolution in Korematsu v. U.S. that accredited of the Japanese elimination and internment.
“I was proud of what we did in the Korematsu cases when I was acting Solicitor General, and I hope that the Justice Department today uses legal judgment, uses its conscience and does the right thing,” Neal Katyal, former Obama administration performing solicitor common, mentioned at a press convention asserting the letters that have been despatched to Biden, Garland and Prelogar.
Katyal was joined by the civil rights teams pushing to overturn the Insular Cases and Fitisemanu and different U.S. territorial residents, who proceed to be denied equal rights and privileges primarily based on the place they reside or have been born.
David Diamadi, a resident of Guam, spoke about how his daughter Haley Nicole Diamadi, who has Down’s Syndrome, will be unable to entry Social Security Supplemental Income advantages when she turns 18 years previous solely due to the place she lives.
“This presents my wife and I with a terrible choice, either we move Haley away from the only place she’s ever really known — a community of family and friends who love and support her here as well as supporting my wife and I — or deny her the access to the financial benefits that would ensure her long-term care,” Diamadi mentioned.
“This ongoing discrimination against residents of U.S. territories is the legacy of the Insular Cases and the doctrine of separate and unequal that they created,” Diamadi added.
The push to get the Supreme Court to overturn the Insular Cases comes after Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor each referred to as for the court docket to take up a case to just do that of their separate opinions within the case of Vaello-Madero v. U.S., which resulted within the continued denial of Social Security Supplemental Income advantages to residents of Puerto Rico.
It is “past time to acknowledge the gravity of this error and admit what we know to be true: The Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes,” Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion. “They deserve no place in our law.”
Gorsuch pointed to the tenth Circuit Court of Appeals resolution within the Fitisemanu case, which explicitly relied on the Insular Cases to proceed to disclaim American Samoans equal rights as Americans, as purpose for the court docket to overrule the Insular Cases. He referred to as the tenth Circuit’s resolution one of many “recent attempts” by decrease courts “to repurpose the Insular Cases [by] merely drap[ing] the worst of their logic in new garb.”
Sotomayor famous her settlement with Gorsuch’s name to overturn the Insular Cases in her dissenting opinion in Vaello-Madero whereas noting that the 100-year-old precedents have been “both odious and wrong.”
The Justice Department has till July 29 to file a response to the Supreme Court to state whether or not they assist or oppose the court docket listening to the Fitisemanu case.
